what were doing to the film, date filming, music, voice over, change in story etc

When you love someone,
You want to keep them safe,
And never let them go,
But life doesn't always work out the way you want.

She couldn't keep him safe,
And she had to let him go,
For Katie, that summer was a nightmare.

But time goes by and life moves on,
Friends are there for you,
And slowly the nightmare fades away.

But do you really know your friends?

For Katie the nightmare is not over,
It's only just begun.
[Scream]


Origen Music Artists - Dance of the clouds.
http://www.jamendo.com/en/search/all/background%20music

Website research

One of the feedback points for our website was to research more into other film websites to get the right idea of what we need to do to make it look more proffessional.
We decided to do more detailed research into our first inspiration for the website, 'Prom Night'. Because the film is distributed by Sony Pictures the website is based within their URL of sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/

The above screen shot is of the first page of the films website. It has links to the homepage, to watch the trailer, register for email updates, and the films Bebo page. The main image is from the poster with just the film title, the tagline and release date. We are thinking of making an opening page for our film leading to the main website but aren't sure whether we have enough time. Another way of incorpreting the style of this website is to have a similar layout for our homepage, using the poster image with the title, tagline and release date and having a few links maybe to a facebook page etc.We will also have to put the institutions and rating, which we already have anyway on our website at the moment.

This is the homepage of the website: sonypictures.co.uk/movies/promnight/site/

After clicking on the 'ENTER THE SITE' link on the opening page the official site opens in a new tab. They've used the same image but enlarged to fill the page with the text in a different layout with the release date above the title. The background is moving, although it is difficult to see what the image is of, it looks like hands with light flares and is obviousley quite dark so not to draw attention away from the main image of the girl. The sites navigation is at the bottom of the image with pages such as 'About the Film', 'Cast & Crew', 'Trailer', 'Gallery', 'Downloads' and 'Soundtrack'.
The ideas we have interpreted from this page are using the poster image as the main focal point, and we've also chosen similar pages, as in other research we found most websites use these headings. Our navigation is at the top of the page however using a consistent font to the rest of the website.

The 'About the Film' page has information on the story, production notes, the making of, and the cast and crews prom stories. For our 'About the Film' page we will just have an outline of the story with some images.
On the 'Cast & Crew' page, detailed info about most of the cast and 'The Filmakers' is given. We will just write general info about the main characters/cast and about us the 'filmakers' perhaps with profile pictures also.
The trailer page obviousley just shows the trailer in the centre of the page. The theme throughout all the pages is the same, background, and text of the title and release date stay in the same place, the centre picture changes to various stills from the film with text boxes overlayed.

The 'Gallery' ^^ shows important images/stills from the film of characters and crucial scenes. The images come up as thunmbnails at the top of the page, when you click on one it shows up underneath but larger for example like in the screen shot above. Our gallery page will have the pictures from the photo album and important stills from the film.

'Downloads' has downloadable backgrounds and buddy icons. Our site will have the poster and backgrounds as downloads.

The 'Soundtrack' page links to a Myspace page with the soundtrack available to listen to and other information available. We've decided not to make our soundtrack a page as we feel it isn't necessary, because the 'Prom Night' soundtrack is a well known song and ours isn't.


We also researched 'The Crazies' website: thecrazies-movie.com
HOMEPAGE HERE!
The homepage has the film title in the top left corner with the release date underneath and also in the centre of the page above the trailer. The background is obviousley a setting from the movie with a sign to the right saying 'HELP US'. The navigation is at the top of the page with pages such as; 'ABOUT', 'VIDEOS', 'GALLERY', 'DOWNLOADS', 'CAST & CREW', and 'BATTLEMAIL'. Below the trailer is the institutions, release date, a phone app link, 'register' (email updates, promos etc), Facebook and Twitter links, and 'find show times' for local cinemas.

The 'ABOUT' page just includes the storyline with the same background as the homepage. (Similar to our idea)
'VIDEOS' has a few different versions of the the films trailer,our trailer page will obviousley just have the one trailer.
The 'GALLERY' has scattered polaroids on the page and when you click on one, similar to the 'Prom Night' website, it comes up larger.
'DOWNLOADS' includes wallpapers, screensavers and buddy icons.
'CAST & CREW'
'BATTLE MAIL' is an interesting idea, at first you have no idea what it is. It is an interactive game. You type in your email and a friends email and start an email battle, obviousley linking to the idea of the films story. Your friend can email you back and so on, continuing the battle. This is a good device to interest the audience and make them more involved and attracted to the film.

FINALLY THE NEW AND IMPROVED STORYBOARD!!

Found the music

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/181830

To Do List...

Ancilliary Tasks. - Website & Poster.

Pre Production;

• Research into existing horror posters, looking at conventions, aspects we thought looked good etc. 
• Research that went in for the website was looking at websites such as the tormented, prom night to look at typical thermes.

Post Production;

• We need to edit the website and make sure it looks proffessional and real.
• For the poster will need to make sure it has all the relevant and promotional information on it.  Overall does it look like a real horror poster.

Distribution;

• The website is going to be on weebly so, anyone will be able to view the website.

To Do List...

Main Task.- Trailer.
Pre Production -

• Research;  We looked at different horror movies to get inspiration and ideas. 

Post Production -

• We need to edit the filming to make it trailer. -9th Dec. 09

Distribution -

• For distribuion we are going to put our trailer on youtube for viewing and of course our blog. -11th Dec. 09

Research for new storyboard

After realising we would have to scrap all the filming we had already done (although it wasn't that much) I decided I was unsattisfied with the opening scene we have for our trailer. I spoke to a few people, some who also do media, and they said maybe we should start it with scary shots, not the calm atmosphere we had before. I think this is a great idea and will really improve our trailer. I did some more research into trailers to get ideas of how to do this new idea.

Paranormal Activity
This trailer is really effective, it shows the first audience who ever watched the film in the trailer. Seeing their reactions is quite shocking and I think these shots scare you more than the film itself. However in the film a good technique they used was infrared. Most of the film was recorded at night so obviously a night vision camera was used. We originally wanted to use this technique in our film but decided it would be too tricky, but now I think it would be worth giving it a go. Another film we watched at the begining of our research also used infrared, it was called Quarentine.


Skin Walkers
The start of this trailer uses taglines to introduce the story. It also shows quite graphic shots which makes you keep watching. I found this was quite an action film and not exactly horror but they did use intersting techniques to attract the audience and tell the story. Flashing/quick editing of shots is used which creates the action feel and also throughout I noticed a copper theme in most of the shots like a tint, maybe to link in with the characters eyes which were copper coloured.


Thir13en Ghosts
The begining scene of the Thir13en Ghosts trailer has a spooky atmosphere, a blue tint to the shots make this. It also shows that it is dark and looks cold. A white flash is used to skip to a more coloured scene and then as the action comes back into play more white flashes skip between different shots. I think the first flash makes it seem like theres a flashback.


The Strangers
This trailer starts with a calm atmosphere and uses taglines to introduce the story. MUSIC. It also shows the views of the characters having double takes, in the first shot you see a person and in the second you don't. When I watched this it was really creepy and definately worked at scaring the audience. Also the use of masks for the other characters really adds to the atmosphere, not being able to see their face, and you can imagine how scared you would be in that situation.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
2-4 second clips are used for the first part of the trailer to set the scene. Then 1 second clips which fade to black are seen, these start to set the pace and atmosphere. I liked the use of freeze frames to show the panic on the characters faces and then faded quickly to white. The last sequence of shots at the end of the trailer are short with quick editing, the clips are also quite dark and the speed of the editing creates an action feel and makes the audience interested.


The Grudge
This trailer really creeped me out. The main element I like about it was how they used a wave of hair to bring the text/titles in and out of the frame.


The Unborn
This trailer also starts off slow and uses white flashes inbetween the scary shots. I really like the titles for this trailer and the background they used. I think the characters really show the genre of this film and just looking at them scares you.


Shaun Of The Dead
I love the trailer for this film, I really like how they've managed to mix together funny and scary and be able to laugh and be scared at the same time.


Looking at all these trailers gave me a great idea for the storyboard. The trailer is going to start with quick editing so you see very short clips, almost flashes, of whats going on like in some of the trailers above. The shots will be of our main character, already been kidnapped, tied to a chair in a room, it will be dark with just a light on her. There will also be shots of the stalker/kidnapper but you won't be able to see all of their face and there will also be pictures he has taken of the girl when she didn't know. All these shots will be interspersed with each other creating a mix up of the shots and hopefully creating a scary/anitcipating atmosphere

Jamendo & Filming

Signed us up to jamendo.com, free legal music, because we really need to sort out music for the trailer ASAP

Andddd we forgot to say we did filming for the opening scene of our trailer on monday. We uploaded the footage yesterday and it all looked fine and are editing it in Mrs Hammond's pratical lesson todayyy!

Filming.

Tonight we are going to start filming, one of the scenes from our trailer this is the opening scene where Karlie and her friends are getting ready for the party.  The location is going to be at Lauren's house in her bedroom. The actors are Amay Campbell, Jo Noble and Charlie Lockton.

This is Amay, she plays the charcter Daisy.

Title

Titles

These are the titles we designed on a graphics website, interactimage.com, as you can see the title we have chosen is 'Possessed'. The reason we chose this one out of our choices is because it gives a twist to the story perhaps making the audience think someone is possessed in the psychiatric/paranormal sense when in fact we mean that the boy wants to own the girl and wants her as a possession. We asked a few people which of the title designs they liked best and which would be best suited to a horror movie poster and the majority of them chose this one:

We will do a mock up of the poster next week when we have a few ideas and samples of images we will use for the background.

To Do List...

Last weeks to do list:

-Finish storyboard - done about a third of it and has been put on blog
-Research/decide type of music we want - roughly researched but not in detail
-Analyse filming that has been done - not done
-Choose picture for poster background - no research done but had discussions about it


This weeks to do list:

-Do some more of the storyboard
-Research more into music
-Think about dialogue, maybe start script
-Make more detailed shot list so we can start filming next week
-Decide if the filming that's already been done can be used, put a few clips of good parts on blog, decide how we can improve them for next week

We aim to have done these things by next Friday.

Storyboard

Here are the first 11 still shots from our trailer. We might change these when we start filming if it doesn't look right or if we have difficulties with the location.

To Do List...

By the end of this week we aim to...

-Finish storyboard
-Research/decide type of music we want
-Analyse filming that has been done
-Choose picture for poster background

Trailer Inspiration

The 'Tormented' and 'Prom Night' trailers inspired us most when coming up with our storyline, we liked these movie trailers, as they seem pretty normal at the start of the trailers but then things start to happen which makes you instantly recognise the genre of the film. They use quick shots from lots of different angles with quick editing, the trailer picks up in pace, with suspense building music to captivate the audience, keep them watching and leave them wanting more.

Prom Night

Prom Night uses

• a teenage cast,
• the events happen at a party/prom,
• they show the characters getting ready,
• use short clips and quick editing for the horror scenes,
• suspense building/changing music,
• has one protagonist and one antagonist,
• the antagonist is a known villain,
• tag lines,
• white flashes in between shots.

All of these techniques etc we have also decided to use in our trailer.
Tormented

Tormented uses

• teenage main characters,
• storyline is based on revenge,
• uses party scenes,
• quick editing,
• suspenseful music,
• character roles,

All of which we have taken inspiration from and will be using in our trailer.

First Lesson-Induction Week

In our first Media lesson we chose our groups and which brief we want to do. In our group is Laura Foster and Lauren Harrison.
The brief we chose is a promotional package for a new film, teaser trailer. From the three options of the smaller tasks we chose the website homepage for the film and the poster for the film.

The genre we've decided on for our trailer is horror/thriller. We chose this genre because there are always a lot of horror/thriller films out in the cinema and seeing the trailers in the cinema and on TV inspired us and gave us ideas for our trailer. Horror/thriller is also a very popular genre with the adolescent audiences, 13-25, which is the target audience we want to promote to.

We made some notes on our brief to give us a guideline of want we need to research, and what we have noticed the features are already;
Teaser Trailer- Short clips of film, 2-3 minutes long, Horror- dark, infrared, quick editing/clips, tag lines, quick flashes of white or black backgrounds, fading, suspense building music, not revealing the killer.
Website- Character pages, download wallpaper/photos, games, music, trailer, actors interviews, behind the scenes, competitions, info on directors.
Poster- Characters, still image of film, directors/actors/producers/composers of music/production company names, website.